UPDATE 3-Energy Transfer Partners restores power to West Texas facility

3 分钟阅读

(Adds Magellan statement on BridgeTex)

HOUSTON, June 8 (Reuters) - Pipeline operator Energy Transfer Partners LP has restored power to a pumping station in West Texas and was in the process of restarting operations on two crude pipelines impacted by an outage following storms, a company spokeswoman said on Friday.

The storms knocked out the company's Colorado City pumping station and storage facility, and impacted its West Texas Gulf and Permian Express II pipelines, the spokeswoman said.

Operations would be restored shortly, the spokeswoman added.

The West Texas Gulf crude pipeline runs from Colorado City to Goodrich, Texas and the Permian Express II runs from origin points in West Texas to Nederland, Texas near the U.S. Gulf Coast.

News of the outages weakened WTI Midland crude differentials further on fears of more barrels being backed up in the region. WTI Midland WTC-WTM weakened to trade as much as $9 a barrel under benchmark U.S. crude futures during the session.

WTI at East Houston, also known as MEH WTC-MEH, strengthened on expectations of reduced flows to the region before easing to trade at about $8.20 a barrel over WTI.

The BridgeTex pipeline, a joint venture between Magellan Midstream Partners LP and Plains All American Pipeline LP which moves crude oil from West Texas to East Houston was also affected by the storms.

A Magellan spokesman said operations at the BridgeTex facility in Colorado City were temporarily suspended due to power interruptions. Power has since been restored and BridgeTex representatives are on-site assessing the facility and planning any necessary repairs, Magellan spokesman Bruce Heine said in an email.

BridgeTex was recently expanded from 300,000 barrels per day to a capacity of 400,000 bpd and is expanding again to about 440,000 bpd, to be operational in early 2019.

Traders said other lines affected include the Mesa Pipeline crude oil system and the 450,000 bpd Basin pipeline, which runs from the Permian basin, to Cushing, Oklahoma.

Plains and Enterprise Products Partners did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reporting by Liz Hampton in Houston and Devika Krishna Kumar in New York; editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Marguerita Choy)